Professor of Medieval and Early Modern Literature, Co-Director of Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning

As an interdisciplinary scholar of Medieval Studies, my teaching and research activities revolve around early Christianity and pre-Enlightenment western spiritual practices, specifically medieval mystics and saints. My dissertation and subsequent publications try to uncover the everyday experiences of devotion among medieval English men and women. Recently I’ve become interested in the connections between medieval and contemporary ways of perceiving and knowing. My current research project explores how New Age and Neopagan spiritual movements draw upon medieval concepts of revelation, reflection, and temporality.

In the classroom I also explore with students this interest in how we know, not just what we know. I believe that a deep and thoughtful relationship with the past, with art and literature, can enrich students’ relationships to themselves and their contemporary world and so I design assignments that foster such connections. For example, creative and contemplative practices drive my General Education course entitled “Arthurian Legends,” where we use the tropes of the romance genre and the hero’s journey to explore our own ethical dilemmas, calls to action, and quests for meaning.

“Prayer and the Cross: Models for Imitation in Ælfric’s Homily for Inventio S. Crucis.” The Place of the Cross in Anglo-Saxon England. Eds. Catherine E. Karkov, Sarah Larratt Keefer and Karen Louise Jolly. Boydell and Brewer, 2005.

Contributing editor of The Once and Future Classroom, an online, peer-reviewed teaching journal for medieval studies in K-12.
Member, Board of Directors, Consortium for the Teaching of the Middle Ages (TEAMS).